History Books

Overviews of Regional History

Night Comes to the Cumberlands by Harry M. Caudill. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963. 394 pages.
One of the most powerful books ever written about the Appalachian Region, Night Comes to the Cumberlands played a large role in the "re-discovery" of the region in the 1960s which influenced the national "War on Poverty." This book is an ardent appeal for policy changes and a helpful overview of the region’s problems, but, most importantly, it directly addresses the question, "Why is Appalachia the way it is?" In addition to all the above, this book gives perhaps the most complete summary of regional history in print. It focuses on Eastern Kentucky, but illuminates the region as a whole. **Click here to order**

West Virginia: A Bicentennial History by John Alexander Williams. New York: Norton, 1976. 212 pages.
This unique state history uses particular events to illuminate their times, providing an innovation and invigorating look at the history of the only state to lie entirely within the Southern Appalachian Region. Readers of this state history will come away with an excellent understanding not only of Wild Wonderful West Virginia, but also of the region it exemplifies as well. **Click here to order**

The Appalachian Frontier

Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the 19^th Century edited by Mary Beth Pudup, Dwight B. Billings and Altina Laura Waller. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995. 391 pages, illustrated, maps.
This unique volume gives readers a window into 19^th century realities in the Appalachian Region. An anthology of articles by different writers, it brings together the work of some of the finest scholars of the region and illuminates some of the most fascinating issues of regional history. **Click here to order**

The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860 by Wilma Dunaway. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996. 448 pages, illustrated, maps.
This book won the Weatherford Award as the outstanding contribution to regional writing for 1996 because it presents an original and exciting analysis of both the economy and the history of the region. Before Dunaway’s book, many assumed that small subsistence farms were the mainstay of the regional economy until the Civil War. She points out the extent to which industrial enterprises and values dominated the mountains during a time which many imagined to be the heyday of an egalitarian yeomanry. **Click here to order**

The Civil War and Reconstruction in Appalachia

The Civil War in Appalachia: Collected Essays edited by Kenneth W. Noe and Shannon H. Wilson. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1997. 284 pages, illustrated, maps.
This volume brings together for the first time a collection of essays which give the reader an overview of the devastating impact that the Civil War had upon the Southern Appalachian Region. Contributors are among the leading experts in the field, skilled at expressing as well as discovering the true impact of the War. **Click here to order**

Days of Darkness: The Feuds of Eastern Kentucky by John Ed Pearce. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994. 227 pages with 16 pictorial plates.
This book presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive view of the family feuds which have become so closely associated with Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia as a whole. Peace’s enjoyable and accessible prose only adds to the intrinsic appeal of his subject matter. **Click here to order**

The Industrialization of Appalchia

Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers: The Industrialization of the Appalachian South by Ronald D. Eller. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1982. 272 pages, illustrated.
Ron Eller, the Director of the Appalachian Center at the University of Kentucky, has become widely viewed as one of the leading historians of the Southern Appalachian Region. This book helped establish that reputation. Since its publication, others have focused on different aspects of turn-of-the-century regional life or on different sub-regions, but no one has superseded this overview. **Click here to order**

World Wars and the Depression in Appalachia

Bloody Ground by John F. Day. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1941, reprinted by the University Press of Kentucky, 1981. 324 pages, illustrated.
Cratis Williams, in his seminal Ph.D. dissertation, The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction cited this study more than any other. Day, a journalist for the Lexington Herald, knew the region intimately during the Depression and traveled it widely. This book focuses on the most interesting aspects of mountain life, like snake-handing religion and burial customs, but is always attentive to the need to give a complete overview as well. Clearly this is one of the most fascinating and informative books ever written about the region. **Click here to order**